Dr. Herman Daly; Nobel Prize Nomination

To the Board and Membership of the ISEE, its national, regional and international branches:

Dear Friends,

We are united by our understanding the destructive nature of the limitless economic growth regime is having on the stressed and failing ecological systems of Earth. I am writing to you today with a very practical strategic initiative to help hasten the paradigm shift to turn things around.

We area also united by our familiarity with the seminal work of Dr. Herman Daly. Despite the many honors he has received and for his courage in swimming up the mainstream called NeoClassical Economics, he has not been honored with a Nobel Prize, which is clearly warranted.

“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.” – Dr. Herman Daly, father of Ecological Economics

I am asking your help in a strategic initiative to have Dr. Daly awarded a Nobel, if not the pseudo-Nobel in Economics (which was endowed in 1969 by the Swedish Central Bank, to add an additional air of legitimacy to their belief system and franchise and whose Committee is dominated by growth economists), then for the more prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, which has recently been awarded twice for environmental/ecological achievements. (Note: It has been advised that the Peace Prize Committee is ‘unlikely’ to make the award for purely academic work no matter how revolutionary or important. Thus we need to stress the practical side of Dr. Daly’s work to maximize our chances of success.)

We have so far succeeded in securing one nomination from a high profile Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for this year’s round of nominations. But we only have until the end of January to raise additional nominations.

Please assist us with this effort today by taking the following simple steps.

1. Please go to the website we have created at www.np4hd.org and specifically to the page to endorse the effort. This list will not be publicized nor sent to the Nobel Committee for reasons alluded to above. Rather it will serve to continue to grow our ranks and the credibility of our undertaking within a sympathetic community of notable individuals.
2. Please take a look at the categories of people qualified to make the Economics Prize nomination, and the Peace Prize nomination. The latter former prize is the more logical one, the latter the more probable one, and there is a discussion of why on the website as well.
3. Are you in one of these categories? If so, we implore you to take the time to make a nomination. You would likely know if you were qualified to nominate for the Economics Prize since our surmise is that they proactively contact qualified individuals with a formal invitation to nominate each year. But this may not be the case, especially since one category includes all permanent professors of economics in the 5 Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. But you may easily be qualified to nominate for the Peace Prize and not know it. Some of the categories are quite extensive. For instance, all members of national assemblies (congresses, parliaments, etc.) and ‘state’ governments can nominate for the Peace Prize and the nomination process is exceedingly easy. It is unclear whether the Nobel Committee’s wording would literally apply to state legislatures in the US, or rather intends the word ‘state’ to mean sovereign nations. But a nomination by someone they did not technically consider qualified would not hurt and might help.
• Complete the loop. Make the nomination if you are qualified to do so, or
• Contact those individuals you know who you believe may be qualified to nominate and encourage them to do so. A bit of arm-twisting is ok, and calling in personal favors would not be beyond the pale. We know how important it is for the world to come to terms with the destruction that NCE is wreaking on the ecology of Earth, and this is strategically the best/easiest way to do that.
4. Please do let us know if you can and will make a nomination. If you are contacting associates who you believe can, please cc: us on any emails sent so that we can perhaps add a bit of urgency to the request and the timing.

Sincere thanks,
Stuart
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Stuart Scott
Deputy Director General, IESCO
www.iesco-iesco.org